Maps by grey_gazania

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Chapter 3: Fingon

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It was a long journey, for I had no horse and thus traveled on foot, stopping here and there at a handful of scattered Sindarin settlements, where I played my harp and sang in exchange for food and a place to sleep. Every step of the way, I prayed that Carnistir was right about Maitimo, for I did not think I could bear to find him dead.

 

Finally, after days upon days upon days of travel, I reached the mountains that guarded the place called Angband. I could see no way in, but then, I had hardly expected Moringotto's stronghold to have a welcome mat. Instead I began to walk the length of the cliffs, looking for a place that would serve as the beginning of a pathway in.

 

Many long hours later, I was forced to admit that such a thing might not exist. Sweaty and exhausted, I sat down upon a rock and took a few precious sips of water to ease my parched throat. The shadows were lengthening and I had still found no sign of amy entrance. I needed to hurry, for I had no desire to spend the night in this exposed, forsaken place. To calm myself, I began to hum and then to sing, picking an old rhyme from my childhood.

 

"I mára quessollo
mára quesset cárina.
Quesset i quessello, quessë filicello
filit i sondallo, sonda i olvallo
olva i aldallo, alda i sulcallo
sulca i cemello—"

 

"— 'pa Menel Cemenyë ontainë," a voice called from above me — raspy and raw, like the singer had been gargling with crushed glass, but still achingly familiar. I looked up, up, up, my head tilted back, peering towards the top of the cliff, and there, finally, I saw him. He was little more than a pale, man-shaped blur in the gloom, his nude body dangling from one thin wrist, but my ears told me what my eyes could not. It was him. I had found him at last.

 

"Maitimo!" I cried.

 

"Findekáno." His voice was no less rough speaking than it had been singing, and I wondered how long he had been without water.

 

"Take heart!" I answered. "I will find a way up." I set to work, but the stone was slick and sheer, and it seemed to resist my efforts to create hand- and foot-holds as though some foul magic lay upon it.

 

"There is no way up," Maitimo called. "They fly, the servants he sends. They do not climb."

 

The servants he sends… I felt a chill in my very core, but I shoved my questions down and said, "There has to be a way!"

 

"There is none." His voice was dull and hollow.

 

"But I have come to free you," I said. "I will not abandon you here, Maitimo."

 

"Your bow, Káno," he said, and his voice shook a little. "Your aim has always been true."

 

My bow? Oh no, no, no, no.

 

"I will not kill you!"

 

"Please, Káno," he pleaded. "There is no way up, and I cannot bear the pain.

 

"I—" I tried to speak, but broke off. What was there to say? He was right — there was no way up. And the longer I stood here, the greater the risk that we would be found by Moringotto's guards.

 

As much as I wished that it were otherwise, killing him truly was the only way to release him from Moringotto's grasp.

 

I pulled my bow from my back and plucked an arrow from my quiver. My hands shook, shook so badly that I could barely keep the arrow in place. I tried to still them, but to no avail. So I sent up a silent plea to Manwë, that he steady my hands and make my arrow fly swift and true.

 

He did not still my hands. But at that moment a great shadow passed over us, and I saw a massive eagle swoop down from the west. As it passed over my head I let out a cry of fear, but it did not attack. Alighting on the ground beside me, twice my height at the shoulder, it spoke. "Loose not your arrow, son of Nolofinwë," it said. "For I am Thorondor, King of Birds, and I have come to aid you." Extending one foot, he commanded, "Take hold of my talon."

 

He lifted me into the air, circling over the cliff where Maitimo was trapped. "At the next pass, let go," Thorondor called to me. I did as he bid, catching the shackle that held Maitimo's wrist to stop my fall.

 

Up close, he was a horrible sight. His skin was stretched taut over his bones; I could count each rib, and his clavicles jutted out like shelves on either side of his neck. His hair was long and matted, turned brown by accumulated filth, and he shivered and burned with fever, no doubt due to his many wounds that oozed with infection. How he was still alive was beyond my knowledge.

 

I tried my best to grip the shackle itself rather than his poor, abused arm, but he still cried out in pain as his shoulder stretched further under my weight. "I am sorry," I said. "But I will have you free soon, I swear it." With that, I began to chip away at the stone. My knife was a fine one, strong and keen-edged, crafted by my uncle Fëanáro himself, a gift for my fiftieth begetting day. But the harder I worked, the clearer it became that it was no match for the hell-wrought shackle that bound Maitimo's wrist.

 

"It will not come loose," I said, on the verge of tears.

 

"Please," Maitimo pleaded once more, and his own eyes and cheeks were wet. "End this, Káno. I can bear no more."

 

"No!" I snapped. "I have not come all this way just to kill you, Maitimo!" There had to be another way. There had to be. But I needed to find it soon; I was placing too much strain on his already-dislocated shoulder, and the shackle was biting into his wrist—

 

His wrist.

 

My knife was strong and keen-edged.

 

"Forgive me," I whispered. Then I shifted my grip on the knife and slammed the hilt against his arm below the shackle.

 

He screamed, a harsh, agonized cry, and tried to bring his other arm up to stop me. But he was weak, and I trapped it between our bodies and then struck again, struck over and over until I felt his bones begin to shatter beneath my blows. I was sobbing openly, begging for his forgiveness as he continued to scream. Eventually he blacked out from the pain, but his cries still echoed in my ears as I began to slice at his flesh, cutting through the tangle of sinews and atrophied muscle beneath his thin skin. Blood soon coated my face, my hands, my clothes, and I let out a hysterical laugh as I remembered the last time I had felt this hot liquid against my skin, fighting on the docks at Alqualondë.

 

The last few cuts were the trickiest, as I sought to drop neither Maitimo nor my knife; my family could not afford to lose so fine a tool, not now. But I managed, and soon Maitimo was free, resting limply in my grasp as I held the knife between my teeth, his blood stinging on my tongue. The eagle had been circling above us as I worked, and it now swooped low to pass beneath our feet. I let go, and we landed safely on his feathered back.

 

"Take us back to Mithrim, to the northern shore," I said, my own voice rough with tears. "Please."

 

"I shall," the eagle said, and we flew off with a great beat of his wings. I took care not to look back, for I did not want to see that lone hand still bound by the shackle, the evidence of my crime.

 

It was cold, up in the rushing wind, but I paid it no mind and pulled my cloak off, wrapping it around Maitimo's frail, shivering body. He was bleeding heavily, and I did what I could to stem the flood of red, but I wasn't certain how long we had before he bled out. I prayed that the eagle would carry us swiftly.

 

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True to his word, Thorondor carried us to the northern shore with all haste, and Maitimo's heart still beat beneath his breast as we swooped down to land. I could hear the excited, bewildered cries of my people as they came rushing towards us, my father at the forefront of the crowd. He gasped when he saw me and yelled for a healer, and I remembered that I was covered in my cousin's blood.

 

"I'm all right," I said when he reached me, my voice shaking. "I'm all right, Atto. But Maitimo—"

 

"Maitimo?"

 

I slid down from Thorondor's back, Maitimo in my arms, and saw my father's face freeze into an expression of utter horror when he recognized who it was I held — that it was a person, his nephew, and not…whatever it was he may have thought at first. He yelled once more for the healers, and Almarë was at his side in moments, her skirts hiked up so that she would not trip as she ran.

 

"Stars," she breathed when she saw Maitimo.

 

As she took him from my arms, I pleaded, "Don't let him die. Please don't let him die."

 

"I have no plans to lose another patient, Prince Findekáno," she said firmly. Then she began to call out orders to her assistants, sending them to heat water and gather supplies. I made to follow her towards the Houses of Healing, but my father stopped me.

 

"Atto—"

 

"No, Káno," he said. "You'll only be in her way. You need to bathe and rest, and then tell me why you did this thing. Almarë will care for Maitimo. Let me care for you."

 

I wanted to argue, but my legs were shaking and my head ached, and the smell of the blood that was caked upon me was making me feel ill. So instead I turned and bowed to Thorondor in thanks. The great eagle nodded his head in return and then flew off, the beating of his great wings causing strong gusts of air that nearly knocked us from our feet.

 

My father wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "My brave boy," he said softly. "Let's get you home."

 

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Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to the long-absent and dearly missed Darth Fingon for his help with the Quenya. It's a translation of a verse from a Yiddish song called "Funem Sheynem Vortsl Aroys" ("From the Lovely Root"):

 

From the lovely feather
A lovely pillow was made.
Pillow from the feather, feather from the bird,
Bird from the nest, nest from the branch,
Branch from the tree, tree from the root,
Root from the earth.
Since Heaven and Earth were created.